Language does not work that way

[ysobel]

Okay, so I generally am enjoying Sleepy Hollow

(cheesy, and full of holes, but fun)

but

that

you are not languaging right

so stop it

So, okay, mystery kid shows up speaking Middle English. Which Ichabod happens to be fluent in because he studied Chaucer at Oxford.

(Improbable, because being able to quote "whan that Aprille with his shoures sote" does not mean being able to legitly converse with a native speaker of that language, but acceptable handwaveyness for plot purposes. Maybe he liked learning languages, idek.)

Turns out that this kid comes, via handwavey timey-wimey shenanigans, from the lost colony of Roanoke.

...

...

...let me give you some wikipedia, which the show writers ought to have looked at.

The colony disappeared in 1590.

Middle English period? ended about 1470.

Chaucer is 1390s.

Shakespeare is 1589.

Pop quiz: which is temporally (and therefore also linguistically) closer to the lost colony of Roanoke, Shakespeare or Chaucer?

SO WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY SPEAKING MIDDLE ENGLISH WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE *combusts a little*

(still not quite as lolsome as the undergrad intro-linguistics paper I read that maintained that Old English was what Shakespeare wrote, but.)